Many Fires Ravage Brazil's Coastal Jungles

Reuters

Published: March 7, 1989

SAO PAULO, Brazil, March 6—
Brazil's few remaining coastal jungles are being destroyed by thousands of fires along a 420-mile stretch of coast, the Government said today.

The Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources said fire was destroying virtually all the forest cover in an Indian reserve of the Pataxo tribe in southern Bahia.

Luciano Pizzato, director of the institute's national parks division, said from Brasilia that there were thousands of fires, big and small, along the coast of southern Bahia and northern Espirito Santo state. ''We have no precedent for a situation as difficult as this,'' he said.

There are 78 fires in the Pataxo Indian reserve alone and no possibility of controlling them, he said.

He said the 1,200 Indians there were safe. Park Fire Under Control

A fire in the adjacent Monte Pascoal National Park is under control, Mr. Pizzato said. He said 1,235 acres of the 34,600-acre park had been affected.

He said there was a possibility fires had been deliberately started by loggers who are active in Bahia, illegally cutting timber in the officially protected forests.

Pataxo Indians are also known to have started fires in the region to clear forests for planting.

The institute gave no estimate for how much forest had been destroyed by the fires, but environmentalists put the figure at more than 74,000 acres.

Scientists say that only about 4 percent of the jungles that once stretched along Brazil's coast survive. Since the arrival of the Portuguese colonists in 1500, the forests have been denuded to meet demand for wood and land to cultivate or develop.

Environmentalists in Bahia say they campaign to save the coastal forests at risk of their lives.

A leading campaigner, Elie Teixeira Leite Franca, said local politicians interested in property development had sent professional gunmen to threaten her. #4 Death Threats Reported ''They threatened to kill me and my husband,'' she said, adding that she had received four death threats in the last 12 months.

Mrs. Franca said the fires were the worst in recent years and accused the Government of inaction. ''The authorities are doing hardly anything,'' she said.

Mr. Pizzato said there were 50 men fighting the fires. He cited the country's scarce resources. ''Brazil does not possess one airplane to combat forest fires,'' he said.